


The Old Letter Opener

by Darth_Cannizard



Category: Joyeux Noël | Merry Christmas (2005)
Genre: Horstebert, M/M, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:40:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24310690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darth_Cannizard/pseuds/Darth_Cannizard
Summary: Herr Schneider buys an old letter opener and then everything goes to hell. Literally.
Relationships: Lt Audebert/Lt Horstmayer (Joyeux Noël)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	The Old Letter Opener

He is on vacation and decides to go to France, strictly speaking to southern Alsace. There is a flea market in the little town he drives through. He loves to look at all the wonderful items being sold, especially when they are old. He imagines whom they belonged to and what was the connection between the owner and the object. So many stories that died together with a person and that nobody knows anymore. All those people long gone but the object still exists - absolutely fascinating!

It’s a small table with a lot of different items. There is porcelain, old photos and books, and some crocheted doilies. It looks like the disbandment of a household. A young woman is sitting behind the table and reading a book.  
  
He becomes aware of an object.  
  
"It's a letter opener from the First World War," she says to him first in French and then in German when she notices his curious looks. "Would you like to take a closer look? It belonged to my relatives."

The object could be a letter opener, but it could also be a knife. It is about 25 cm long and is quite heavy. The handle is a Lorraine Cross, on the other side there are flowers. He deciphers an "aicer" = steel and "coule" = flow on the two horizontal cross arms and vertically something that looks like initials, a "C.R.A" and a "K.D.H.". She would like to have 40 euros for it and he immediately agrees. Unfortunately, she cannot tell him anything about the history of the knife, _he is sure that it is one_. She wraps it up in paper and he takes it - happy as he has not been for a long time. He cannot explain why he is so happy and euphoric.

He spends a few more days in Alsace and then drives home. His grandmother left him a three-story house in Bergisch Gladbach, a town near Cologne. Unfortunately a little bit dark, but he renovated it wonderfully. It has a garden that cannot be seen from the street. 3 floors that he stuffed with his possessions. He lives alone. No wife or partner and no male lover. He works as an official at the Federal Employment Agency but only half days. The job is fun and interesting, his colleagues are calm and pleasant, the salary is generous - life is beautiful.

It starts off very harmless and at the beginning he is not even sure whether his senses are fooling him or whether the book has actually fallen off the shelf again. Did he forget to close the cupboards in the kitchen? And was the letter opener, _the knife_ , really in the middle of the table in the library and not more to the side of it? Why does it seem to vibrate sometimes? And are his hands sweating or has the letter opener suddenly become very warm? And why does his cat look a little scared? The neighbor’s dog?

At some point he feels like he is no longer alone in his house. He believes to hear footsteps, but never in the very room he is in, but still near him and simply whereever the letter opener is nearby. Once voices can be heard in the hallway. It’s just a whisper, but he's sure he heard it. When he looks out of the library’s door, the corridor is pitch black and quiet. And here and there he sees movements from the corner of his eyes, mostly in the evenings but as soon as he turns around there is nothing to be seen. He is not a fearful person, but a pragmatic and down-to-earth man, but as the events increase, he searches online for advice but then puts it ad acta because everything suddenly stops.

But only to appear stronger and in a different form.

He dreams of a war.

At first he can't assign where and when it is, but then it's clear: it's the Great War. The almost forgotten. The one who is overshadowed by the one that followed after it. Although he is an educated man, he speaks little French, but the most miraculous thing is he speaks it fluently in his dreams. And he's desperate. He wakes up sweating and crying more than once. _It’s forbidden_ , is the thought, _but he is my love_ and _what should we do_? He feels pity for the soldier, whoever he is. Pity and an incredible willingness to help him. Then the dreams stop and he has his peace of mind for a few days. He decides to put the letter opener away on the attic. Somehow everything is focused on this piece of steel.

And then it gets really bad.  
  
He wakes up in the middle of the night and feels like a tornado is raging on the attic. It gets so bad that he goes over to the neighbors in his bathrobe and calls the police from there because he doesn't know what else to do. He talks about burglars and sends the brave officers inside. Of course they don't find anything, _but it’s sure the burglars were on the attic, Herr Schneider_ , they say to him later. _We'll look for traces and someone will stay with you overnight if they decide to come back._ The rest of this night is earily quiet. He goes to work the next day and stays longer because he is afraid to go home. The letter opener lying in the middle of the room. Sheer Armageddon around it. He can't get the picture out of his head.

It doesn’t get better. The following nights are even worse. He stays in a hotel and draws up a plan.

Communication is the best solution.

On a bright and sunny saturday he climbs the stairs to the attic. He opens the small window, lets the sun in, arranges what survived “the storm”, respectfully places the letter opener on a beautifully crocheted cloth in the middle of the room. His heart is pounding wildly, but nobody is there. He can hear the birds chirping from outside and even his cat takes the risk and comes to him to see what all the noise from the past days was about. He has prepared a sack of sand. He spreads the sand on the floor and forms a 1 by 1 meter area that is thick enough to write something on it. He leans his grandmother's large mirror at the opposite wall. _Who are you?_ Is what he writes in the sand with his finger. _Please stop destroying my attic. I want to help you._ Everything is silent that night. No steps, no whispers, no rumbling in the attic. Almost as if **it** was thinking and gathering it’s strength. He goes up the next day. Everything is as he left it yesterday. Everything, except for the somewhat indistinct lettering in the sand. _Camille A_ , it says. And further down in French: _hel us_. So there are two of them?

His French is miserable, but he manages with the help of Google Translator and Linguee. _How can I help you? Who is the other person?_  
  
It takes weeks until he has enough information to do something. And then the dreams start again.

  
  
He wakes up and his heart is light and full of joy.

  
  
He wakes up and his heart is filled with a love of such a strength and intensity it almost makes him jealous because he never felt anything like it.

  
  
He wakes up and the despair he feels is so dark and oppressive he has to report sick that day because he can't stop crying.

  
  
He wakes up and searches his body desperately for the terrible injury he saw in the dream. As such, the bed should be stained with blood, but there is nothing to see. Of course not.

He dreams about what _the Other_ has experienced - Camille Audebert. Probably a french officer. He had tried to find descendants of him, but unfortunately he was unsuccessful. The letter opener, _no, knife_ , said the ghost, was given to him as a gift by the mysterious K.D.H. and the only thing he found out about him was that he was a German _. Romeo and Romeo of the trench warfare_ , thinks _Herr Schneider_. That other one is sometimes visiting too, but he is much weaker than Camille and so they didn't speak to each other. Or maybe the German is just being polite.

On a dark afternoon in December, he is on the attic again and is setting up a small, beautifully decorated Christmas tree for _his Frenchman_ , as he started to call him. The rumbling, whispering and footsteps didn't stop, but he's got used to them now, especially since everything has become much quieter, much less angry, more respectful. He is leaning down to write something nice on the sand and notices a movement in the mirror he is facing. He stands up. The man he sees in the mirror seems to be standing behind him, but he is sure that if he looked around, he wouldn’t see him. Definitely a french officer of the First World War in his deep blue uniform with his red pants. Good-looking, with soft brown eyes, a handsome man, if a little pale. He looks at _Herr Schneider_ with a serious and focused expression. Schneider wants to bow politely and hears a whispering: _If you look away, the connection will break._ _How much strength do you have_ , he asks and wonders how it’s possible they are talking without speaking the other’s language. _At this time of year a lot_ , is the answer. The German begins to speak without looking away. He introduces himself, talks about his family, his work, his dreams, wishes, his convictions. And then his guest from the Other Side is speaking and _Herr Schneider_ sees pictures passing by in his mind's eye. In the end he is crying and out of breath, but now he knows what the Frenchman wants. The other - Karl - apparently still has descendants in eastern Germany – _Sachsen_ \- and the place where his burial place is in France is known to them. Because the biggest problem Camille has is he has no grave, no final resting place and he is bound to an object. The very object _Herr Schneider_ bought in Alsace a few weeks ago.

***

A few weeks later on a bright and sun-filled friday there is a small ceremony in a military cemetery in France. At the end of it, the grave of one Oberleutnant Karl Daniel Horstmayer, who died nearby in 1917, is blessed by the priest and the letter opener is placed on the grave.  
  
Finally the lovers are reunited.  
  
  
  
 _Herr Schneider_ misses his french spirit, but still... the 40 euros for the letter opener really paid off.

**Author's Note:**

> The object I write about is actually in my possession and my plan was to show it on a pic would I not have failed to insert it into the story. The seller told me he bought it on a flea market in a little town in southern Alsace.


End file.
